Just a few things that caught my eye:

• Henrik Zetterberg has a big butt. How else did the ref miss Zett's hand closing on the puck on Chris Osgood's back? Maybe he was staring like ol' Sir Mix-A-Lot. Blown call.

• Marc-Andre Fleury pulled the old 'how I lost the World Junior Championships for Team Canada' trick in the third, skating out to play the puck and almost flipping it straight into the oncoming Red Wing. At least he didn't trip leading his team onto the ice this year.

• The Red Wings were ripe for some plucking tonight, at least in the early going; the Pens had their hands on their throats but couldn't find the cleaver.

• The Penguins last played in Detroit on November 11, a date well before Dan Bylsma arrived. I guess he figured a board is a board is a board. Maybe that's why he thought it was smarter to have his team practise at home and then roll in for the game rather than checking out the subtleties of Joe Louis Arena. I'm not sure he'll do that again. 

• Darren Helm played 16 games with the Wings this season and finished with one assist and a minus-7 rating. Today, he got more ice time than Johan Franzen, Mikael Samuelsson and Jiri Hudler, and finished as one of the game's stars. He's pure determination and that means he'll be the darling of the Canadian media. You know, hard-luck kid from Manitoba, cut by his junior team, claws his way toward his dream. CBC will do a feature on him; you know it's coming.

• Just so you know, the plural of octopus is not octopii. It's octopuses. Or maybe it's just Octopussy. The first is grammatically offensive; the second one is just flat-out vulgar. The third? I never cared for Roger Moore in that role.

• Jonathan Ericsson is a tough cuss, eh? Appendectomy Wednesday afternoon, Stanley Cup playoff game three short days later. Maybe he had the same doctor that said Martin Havlat could play after getting knocked unconscious. Hmmmm...

• Brian Rafalski may be the most underrated shutdown defender in the league. This undrafted shortie didn't even bite on Sidney Crosby's spinarama move. He just knocked the puck away, that's all. Wow.

• He ain't pretty but he's headed toward a Conn Smythe. Osssssssssss-ieeeeeeeee. 

• Seventy-one percent is completely relative. It won't get you into most Canadian universities; it's barely a B-minus. But when it's a team's faceoff winning percentage, it's pure platinum. C'mon Bylsma -- you have to get your boys to win at least a third of the faceoffs. And while you're at it, get Jordan Staal to stop looking like a deer in the headlights.